Does anybody know how the AW content matching algorithm works?
My problem is that I have a Google campaign that has been running for 30 days and was generating about 300 clicks per day. Yesterday I changed the text and my daily impressions on the content matching network have dropped from about 200,000 per day to zero.
I have started to run a number of experiments to try to figure out how the algorithm works. The things I am checking are as follows:
a) Approval status
In some of my campaigns which are related to low traffic/ low value topics I can show that I do not need to undergo a physical review before a change is committed to the content and search partner network. However, in some of my more active/high value campaigns it seems that a physical review is necessary before the changes are committed to the content and search partner network.
Does anybody agree/ disagree?
b) Title and Body text content
I can not see any other way that Google would know how and when to apply an advert to an affiliate page unless it was using some kind of spider/index algorithm. If so does this spider and index just the advert (or) the advert and landing page.
Does anybody know?
c) Keywords
Do Google match your keywords and phrases with the keywords and phrases of the target host?
Any ideas that would support/inspire my experiments would be appreciated.
Kind Regards,
Adrian Smith - London
The first thing that strikes me about your post is that you appear to have made a change to the content of your ad on Friday or Saturday. Any change to an ad no matter how superficial will temporarily remove you from the Search and Content Networks.
You'll still show on Google, but a human review is needed before you'll be restored on the other networks.
In other words, Google will take a chance on their own pages that you haven't changed your ad to something horrendous or malevolent, but doesn't want to risk giving it to their partners. I'd say that's almost certainly the reason Content dropped to zero.
Although that's a fact, that seems like kind of loose logic to me though. One could leave the ad be and change their page content to something over the top objectionable and it would take Google a while to find out. That's another issue I've always wondered about, however.
Not surprisingly, there is always some backlog and the reviewers don't generally work on the weekends.
In some of my campaigns which are related to low traffic/ low value topics I can show that I do not need to undergo a physical review before a change is committed to the content and search partner network.
Well, Adrian, maybe you're somebody special :) but the rest of us always get the review. Of course, I could be mistaken. Perhaps they just tell me "everyone needs a review" because I'm not a "gold" member or something :)
AWA has advised it's best to make changes mid-week for the shortest lag time between change and approval. Come Monday morning, they've accumulated at least 2 1/2 days of changes assuming they were caught up on Friday.
As far as your other questions about the Content Network, I don't have much experience with it. I've avoided Content for the most part for reasons that may make it detrimental to my campaigns, but perhaps not yours.
I look forward to hearing more views on your experiments.
patient2all
Many thanks for a very informative and intelligent response.
Kind Regards,
Adrian
